Jamming of uplink satellite antennas has become an increasing threat for disrupting satellite communication services worldwide. A jammer (e.g., a ground jammer) may use various terminals such as a large aperture terminal to transmit high power signals towards a satellite to disrupt a particular communication channel or service. Satellite communication service providers are looking for ways to counter this threat, for example, by adding anti-jamming antennas to the payload. Such systems are often expensive, have limited effectiveness, and can disrupt the satellite communication service significantly during a jamming experience.
Existing anti-jamming payloads may have added antenna elements distributed around the main antenna to create nulls towards the interferers. Reflector antennas with an active feed array or direct radiating arrays can also be used to provide low sidelobe or nulls in the direction of the interferers. The main disadvantages of the existing solutions are the cost associated with implementing these solutions and/or the limited anti-jamming capability they offer. Moreover, in these solutions, the degradation of the antenna gain-to-noise-temperature (G/T) may occur over the full frequency band of the beam rather than being limited to jammer bandwidth, as is desirable.